Question

The owner of a small social services management consulting firm wants to minimize the total number of hours it will take to complete four projects for a new client. Accordingly, she has estimated the time it should take for each of her top consultants -- Adil, Barry, Camilla, and Diana -- to complete any of the four projects, as follows:

Project Hours
Consultant	A	B	C	D
Adela	18	22	16	17
Bijeesh	13	14	22	16
Conrad	21	11	19	17
Destiny	15	12	19	20

**Please show excel steps so I can see if I was able to do this right** THANK YOU

1. What is the total number of hours required by the following arbitrary assignment? Adela→B; Bijeesh→A; Conrad→D; Destiny→C

2. What is the optimal assignment of consultants to projects? (Use the assignment method; SHOW YOUR WORK!)

3. For the optimal schedule, what is the total number of hours it will take these consultants to complete these projects?

Answer 1

We tabulate the data as shown below:

The above table in the form of formulas is shown below for better understanding and reference:

We assign the consultants as given in the question:

As seen from above, we get the total time as shown in orange = 71 hours

We now find the optimal assignment using Excel Solver as shown below:

The Solver extract is shown below for better understanding and reference:

The optimal assignment is shown in the upper table.

The time taken is shown in orange = 58 hours

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